Between Prestige-Seeking and Profit-Seeking. How to Make the Academic and Business Worlds Meet

Abstract

There are many reasons why Polish universities need further reforms – but weak university-business links figure out prominently. The snapshot picture is as follows: Polish universities are self-centered, inward-looking,semi-feudal and hierarchical, too much collegial and not managerial enough. What is needed today: to encourage a good institutional climate for stronger university-business links, academic entrepreneurialism, and cooperation with the outside (extra-mural...) world. Western European university governance and funding models are to be applied: no more „Polish exceptionality”; Western European solutions which work are the key. More learning is needed – no time for a national trial-and-error approach. Succesful Western European models are useful, with national adaptations. More competition – for prestige, recognition, and research funding; better understanding of universities to bring science and business closer (the world of business is much better analyzed!). The two worlds – fundamentally different, though.